Brooklyn Bohemians
How a Generation of Funky, Fly, Soon-to-Be-Famous Black Artists Changed American Culture
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Brooklyn Bohemians
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Nelson George
An exciting social history encompassing music, culture, and real estate during the vital, artistically rich, and plain old fun period of the 1980s and ’90s in the Brooklyn neighborhoods of Fort Greene and Clinton Hill
When Nelson George moved into 19 Willoughby Avenue in 1985, he was able to rent two of its four floors plus a backyard for less than $1,000 a month. For years, the top floors remained empty, the price not low enough to attract renters scared off by Fort Greene’s reputation for crime. Yet, on those same streets and in vintage brownstones, a black cultural movement of a kind unseen since the Harlem Renaissance was taking place.
In this corner of Brooklyn, Spike Lee and Branford Marsalis huddled with Public Enemy to create “Fight the Power” for Do the Right Thing. Chris Rock, after joining Saturday Night Live, roared around the area in his red Corvette, while Mos Def and Talib Kweli hung out at Brooklyn Moon café to hear Saul Williams’s latest spoken word epic. Erykah Badu, Laurence Fishburne, and Rosie Perez all lived a few blocks away from one another as they did work that shaped the era’s music, film, and literature.
Like Greenwich Village in the ’60s, Fort Greene / Clinton Hill in the ’80s and ’90s was the epicenter of surprising creations and collaborations that continue to influence culture today. Accompanied by photographs of key figures and moments, Nelson George’s chronicle is a vivid retelling of this rich period in the history of a beloved New York City borough.
Commentaires
“With singular authority and a diehard fan’s rapture, Nelson George offers a passionate and important corrective to Manhattan-centric accounts of NYC Bohemia: a ‘90s Fort Greene that was as dense with creative ferment as Paris in the ‘20s.”
—Ada Calhoun, New York Times bestselling author of St. Marks Is Dead
“One of America’s most brilliant writer-critics . . . George is a cultural treasure and Brooklyn Bohemians is a must-read. Buy this book!”
—Mary Karr, author of The Liars’ Club, Cherry, Lit, and The Art of Memoir
“From Lester Bowie to Erykah Badu, from Juniors Cheesecake to bulletproof takeout on Murder Avenue. My friend Nelson George comes through with this loving tribute to the community of Fort Greene, Clinton Hill in our beloved Brooklyn. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book, and I believe you will too.”
—Laurence Fishburne
“It's still surreal that I've witnessed this history in real time, much less having been a part of what Nelson George captures in such a snapshot for all to now read.”
—Chuck D, Public Enemy
“Brooklyn Bohemians fully embodies the colloquial phrase “for the culture” in distinct and profound ways. Featuring a veritable who’s who of Black creatives, the book, part memoir, part cultural history, narrated by the OG of “post-soul” American letters, takes us on a time stamped journey through the neighborhoods of Fort Greene/Clinton Hill as themes of film, music, art and Blackness get sampled. . . . An instant classic of time and place, instead of adding this book to the established canon, use it to start a new one.”
—Dr. Todd Boyd, a.k.a. Notorious Ph.D., the Katherine and Frank Price Endowed Chair for the Study of Race and Popular Culture at the USC School of Cinematic Arts
